What Immigration Did with Just $1M and Open Source Software

by Ben Pearson

August 6th, 2014

The Australian Department of Immigration chose to use the open source programming language R to process visitor visas. The first prototype of the application cost them only $50,000 and in the first 12 months of production use more than 290,000 immigrants were processed, leading to 69 declined visas. This is a good example of governmental organizations turning to simple, low cost, open source solutions to solve problems.